Tughlaq

Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq works out its protagonist’s progressive alienation both from the society in which he lives in and also at the interpersonal level from the individuals around him. In a 1971 interview, Karnad recalls that Tughlaq struck him as “the most idealistic, the most intelligent king ever to come to the throne of Delhi, including the Mughals”, who nevertheless ended as “one of the greatest failures” because of contradictions within his personality and the self-defeating nature of his politics. The 13 scenes of the play, though closely related to the first two decades of Indian independence, also address the emerging ambivalence of power relations in the political and public spheres that were based, for the first time in India, on the principles of mass representation and enfranchisement. The binaries of the ruler/ruled and the mysterious inner chambers of power politics/the open, public areas of those affected by it form the bedrock of the play. Politically, the play shows Tughlaq’s futile attempts to be just and liberal towards a majority of the Hindu population. Simultaneously, the play also uncovers Tughlaq's sadistic, manipulative impulses which undercut his image of himself as an exemplary ruler. But he plays paradigmatic qualities as historical fiction and its cultural vitality derive principally from the multifold engagement with history, that lies behind the words and functions differentially in the processes of “reading” and “watching” the play.